


artificial flower

by amazonqueen



Series: these foolish feelings [2]
Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Fashion & Models, Angst, Angst and Feels, Dialogue Heavy, Established Choi Seungcheol | S.Coups/Yoon Jeonghan, Female Hong Jisoo | Joshua, Genderbending, Homophobia, Hong Jisoo | Joshua & Yoon Jeonghan Are Best Friends, Idiots in Love, Internalized Homophobia, LLF Comment Project, M/M, Model Yoon Jeonghan, Sexual Harassment, Smoking, Yoon Jeonghan-centric, copious amounts of smoking, there's so much dialogue why is there so much dialogue, what is happiness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-11
Updated: 2018-02-11
Packaged: 2019-03-16 20:09:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13643568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amazonqueen/pseuds/amazonqueen
Summary: “You don’t know what I think about,” Jeonghan said. “You don’t know how often I think of him, or how little. So don’t pretend you do. If you don’t know what’s in my head, that just means I’m doing my job well.”(I’m not supposed to think.)“We’re not supposed to know what models think about?”“I’m supposed to be a pretty face, Jihoon, not a pretty brain.”orsupermodel yoon jeonghan has Issues





	artificial flower

Yoon Jeonghan rolled his neck once left, once right and then back to centre again.

On long, drawn-out days like these, ones where he had five am call times and, it seemed, didn’t leave until five pm, he was never fully comfortable in his own body, like his pale skin was stretched too much over his bones, like his bones weren’t settling in the right spots. So he stretched until he heard that crack, until the pain was edging just over the line between ‘just right’ and ‘too much’, and then he stopped, like some sort of modern, Asian, Goldilocks.

The staff swirling around him on the set didn’t care; they had seen weirder, and even if they hadn’t, they’d leave him to it. Yoon Jeonghan’s name carried weight in the fashion world; this was an editorial for him alone, after all. Jeonghan was a bit of a star, and he knew it. He had wiggle room. Jeonghan often got away with just a little more, just a little extra.

He liked just barely edging over lines. Jeonghan had learned long ago how to tell when too much was genuinely too much.

(He had probably been spoiled by Cheollie; the other man had always been just a bit too nice about letting Jeonghan’s antics go.)

“Jeonghan,” one of the staff called out to him, and he looked up, eyebrows lifting. “Hm?”

“Touch-ups and then final shots,” said the artistic director on the shoot, and Jeonghan nodded and got his ass planted into the hair and makeup seat, little tubes and containers and all kinds of brushes scattered on the vanity counter, lids ajar or unaccompanied, brush sets open or empty.

They’d been here a long, long time. Jeonghan felt bad for the staffers; they got to the set before him and left after him. A twelve-hour day for him was even longer for them.

(Nobody in this industry got a good night’s sleep.)

“Stop sweating,” Heeyeon-noona mumbled under her breath. She swiped her fingers along his temple, where the sweat had collected during the shoot, and showed it to him accusingly. Streaks of foundation were smeared along her fingers. “Look at this,” she said to him. “ _Look_ , Jeonghan. Why don’t you make my job easier and just close your sweat glands off somehow?”

He laughed a little but kept absolutely still and closed his eyes as she got to work with her foundation brush. “Sorry noona,” he said, voice not very contrite at all. “But I don’t think that’s possible.”

“He has a point,” Junghwa said from behind him as her magic fingers got to work fluffing his hair. Jeonghan’s eyes snapped open and met Junghwa’s in the mirror, a mischievous smile toying on the hair stylist’s mouth.

“Oh, shush,” Heeyeon-noona snapped, fake irritability creeping into her voice. Junghwa shot the makeup staffer a brilliant smile.

“How you holding up, Jeonghan?” she asked brightly.

“Ready to leave,” he said honestly, and both staffers laughed.

“Ain’t that the truth,” Heeyeon-noona mumbled to herself.

“Hair’s all good,” Junghwa said, squinting at it a little in the mirror. “I’ll do something with your bangs after unnie’s done with that pretty face of yours.”

Foundation done, Heeyeon-noona put the brush and powder back down so she could move on to his eyelashes.

“God, do you not know how to keep makeup on?” she asked, frustrated, as her fingers swept under his eyes and came up with little black specks. Mascara, not pulling its weight and falling off his eyelashes.

“Isn’t makeup supposed to come off?” he asked in reply.

“Only when I _want_ it to,” Heeyeon-noona said, and got started on aggressively reapplying mascara. Jeonghan let his eyes flutter shut and sat very, very still.

“Unnie isn’t in a good mood today,” Junghwa stage-whispered, having taken a seat on a chair she’d pulled up from somewhere.

“Wonder what gave that away,” Jeonghan said, eyes still closed.

“Careful,” Heeyeon-noona warned. “I have a pointy mascara wand close to your eyeballs right now, Jeonghan, you wanna fucking play?”

“It was Junghwa’s fault,” he immediately replied, and got a slap on the arm from Junghwa for his efforts.

“Don’t damage the goods,” he said to Junghwa. “What are you going to do if it leaves a mark, huh? Shoot’s almost over, don’t do this to everyone.”

“Yeah, Junghwa,” Heeyeon-noona said almost absently, focused on Jeonghan’s face.

“I feel so attacked right now,” Junghwa said to the air, and then noona was done with the makeup and Junghwa was standing in front of Jeonghan, head tilted.

Her hand stretched out and she fluffed the bangs a little more, brushing them to the side the way she wanted it to go.

“Hm,” she said, but then didn’t do anything more. “That should be good,” she finally said, and then turned to the director.

“Done!”

“Final shots,” the director said.

“Jeonghan,” their photographer called, and Jeonghan looked up hastily from his phone. “Can I talk to you in private for a moment? I want to tell you how I want it to look.”

“Sure,” he said, and tucked his phone into his bag.

He and the photographer, Kim Minhyuk, were standing off to the side, away from the staff, partially blocked from view by a rack of clothes. There wasn’t anything inherently suspicious about it; Jeonghan had talked to plenty of photographers like this before, heads huddled together as the artist informed the canvas how he wanted the art to look. Plenty of photographers were like that, sticklers for their original vision, perfectionists.

Nothing about it was strange, and yet.

Jeonghan had a deep sense of unrest brewing in his stomach, and he didn’t like it.

Kim Minhyuk was a good photographer; that was undisputed. But whether he was a good person was a harder question to answer. The female staffers in particular were skittish around him, which Jeonghan had learned a little while back was a good sign of a shitty guy. And the way Kim Minhyuk _looked_ at him; it made his skin crawl. The camera between them had been a barrier that Jeonghan had been grateful for when they were shooting, but now there was nothing and Jeonghan was maybe regretting saying ‘sure’ just a few moments ago.

“Jeonghan,” Kim Minhyuk said, voice low, and Jeonghan could feel the panic rising in his throat, claws sinking into his esophagus, grabbing at his tongue.

(It wasn’t like he had never been in this situation before, but it was a new and multi-headed beast every time he dealt with it.)

Jeonghan didn’t know what to say so he didn’t, his words evaporating into the air like the smoke from his cigarettes.

(Speaking of cigarettes; he needed one.)

“You’re so fucking pretty, you know that?”

Jeonghan wasn’t sure if the feeling in his throat was vomit or disgust.

“Minhyuk-ssi,” he said, and then nothing.

(Formality and distance was what he was trying to imply but it seemed that Kim Minhyuk was either a wilful asshole or a fucking idiot or both.)

There was a vice grip on his arm and Jeonghan’s eyes snapped down to look at it, then back up at Kim Minhyuk. “You’re so fucking pretty,” Kim Minhyuk repeated, and Jeonghan’s stomach flipped.

“Let go of me,” he said, voice just as low as the other man’s.

A yank on his arm and then a strange mouth on his, and Jeonghan startled out of his own skin and into the rack of clothes they were behind, toppling it over.

Kim Minhyuk (a smart idiot) had let go of his arm and so Jeonghan had fallen into the rack himself, with Kim Minhyuk standing there, surprised and then concerned, crouching over Jeonghan’s prostrate body as if he _cared_.

“You okay?” Kim Minhyuk asked, smile more a baring of teeth than a sign of friendliness, hand outstretched.

“I’m fine,” Jeonghan replied, eyes a little too hostile as he pushed the other man’s arm away and stood up himself.

A swarm of staff had converged upon the two of them now, righting the rack, putting the clothes back on their hangers. Junghwa and noona were both looking at him with something like suspicion, eyeing Kim Minhyuk, the way Jeonghan was looking at the photographer, the way the photographer was looking at him.

“I’m fine,” Jeonghan repeated as he brushed past them, and took his place on the set.

(The phantom imprints of the other man’s hands still tingled, still made themselves known. Jeonghan wanted a cigarette, wanted a drink, wanted to find some way somehow to erase those impressions, to rip the skin right off if he had to.)

When the shoot ended, Jeonghan only stayed for as long as he had to, getting his makeup taken off, bowing and thanking the staff, before grabbing his things and booking it.

* * *

He ended up outside Seungcheol’s apartment building lighting a cigarette.

Technically, Jeonghan wasn’t supposed to smoke. He wasn’t allowed to; it was in his morality clause, and his agent would probably not pitch a fit but make his disapproval known if he saw. But out here, in the part of town that Seungcheol lived in, Jeonghan could be fairly sure that nobody would cast a second glance at a tall, attractive man smoking. It wasn’t any of their business, and pretty much every model he knew smoked, anyway.

Jeonghan glanced at his phone for a moment. Nothing; no texts, no missed calls, just a notification from a new _Candy Crush_ -esque game he’d downloaded a while ago.

Why not, the game was saying. Why not.

Why not indeed.

Jeonghan felt Seungcheol’s spare key press against the hand in his pocket, and decided that he might as well. Maybe Seungcheol would be in his apartment, and Jeonghan would have somebody to talk to, someone to laugh with, someone who knew the person behind the model. Someone to erase Kim Minhyuk (those grabby hands, those gleaming eyes) with. New hands to put over the old ones.

Yoon Jeonghan stubbed his cigarette out and went up to Cheol’s apartment. When he used the key, he found an empty apartment. Seungcheol’s shoes weren’t there, his bag wasn’t there, his keys weren’t in his bowl on the kitchen counter.

Without Seungcheol, the apartment was just as empty as Jeonghan’s own, just on a smaller scale. But even Seungcheol’s apartment felt more like a home than Jeonghan’s; Jeonghan’s apartment was mostly pristine, white walls, beautiful hardwood floors. He lived between his couch and his bedroom, most of the time, nowhere else. In Seungcheol’s apartment, the counters were never as perfectly clean as Jeonghan’s, the fridge never as fully stocked with diet food or food in general, and the desk never perfectly organized. Seungcheol rarely bothered to clean up what he didn’t need to; a corkboard with haphazard magazine cutouts and photos hung next to his computer, various magazines that he had presumably used to make his collage scattered on the desk, USB cords in a tangled pile. Stacks of books on the coffee table that he hadn’t read yet or just started, left unfinished, book still open.

It made his apartment look lived in, which was a lot better than Jeonghan’s already. His apartment had no inspiration board, no pile of fashion magazines (besides the ones that he had been in), no tangled USB cords, no stack of books. Jeonghan had been an art history major in university but he didn’t even remember if there was any artwork in his apartment.

(He had _loved_ art, could pronounce all the painters’ names correctly, name which movement they’d been part of, who they had been influenced by, what world events had changed their lives. And look at him now, rattling off fashion houses and their chief designers, identifying what season and collection an item had come from, who they had been influenced by. In many ways, all he had done was change to another form of art.)

Jeonghan went hunting in Seungcheol’s bedroom for his clothes drawer (that he had stayed over so many times that he had his own clothes drawer was probably supposed to be a little alarming, but to him it was a fact of life) and changed into a white t-shirt and grey sweatpants, tossing his old clothes into the hamper.

Who needed skinny jeans when you had sweatpants?

Jeonghan sat himself on Seungcheol’s cheap couch and then elected to make himself at home (they had known each other for too long to stand on things like formalities; he had already invited himself in, he might as well go all the way), lying down on the couch, sliding his phone out.

 _Why not_ , the game beckoned again, and Jeonghan let himself slide into a sweet, pastel world for a little while until he heard the door open again.

“Cheollie,” he said, biting his lip as he tried to figure out how he was going to get himself out of this level.

“What are you doing here?”

His eyes lifted to meet Seungcheol’s.

“We’re friends, aren’t we?” he asked lightly. “Friends don’t need a reason to go see each other.”

“Okay, but how did you get in?”

“I think you gave up the right to pretend it’s a surprise to see me here after you gave me a key, Cheol,” Jeonghan replied, unable to keep the fondness out of his voice as he watched his best friend move around the kitchen. His words came out alarmingly domestic, sweetness mixed with something sharp, the voice he’d found himself lapsing into with Seungcheol more often than not in university.

“I seem to recall someone grabbing my spare key and claiming it as their own,” Seungcheol replied, peering into his fridge.

Jeonghan eyed his best friend’s ass in a totally straight way and tried to remember whose version of events was true. Jeonghan himself certainly didn’t recall anything as criminal as _stealing_. He only took things. Without the intention of giving them back. Or reclaimed things that were rightfully his.

Somehow, he had the feeling that neither of those would go over well.

“Sounds like a bad person,” Jeonghan said lightly, turning off his phone and letting it drop to his thighs. “You should get rid of them.”

(Should Seungcheol get rid of Jeonghan? Probably. It would finally complete it, would bring the drop in the music that Jeonghan had been waiting for so long. Nobody else was like Seungcheol. Nobody else gave two shits about him before he became their cash cow, their canvas, their muse. How long would it be, he wondered, before he became truly alone.)

“Yeah. I probably should.”

Jeonghan could feel his heartbeat, shaking, uncertain.

( _Tell me why_ , his inner girl group fan trilled. _Why is my heart shaking?_ )

Seungcheol’s voice had been too close to serious, apparently, for the both of them, because his best friend turned around with that endearing smile of his, stretched just a tad too thin.

(Seungcheol was nowhere near as good at fake smiles as Jeonghan. That was probably a good thing. Jeonghan didn’t know if he could take another him.)

When Seungcheol decided to latch onto the shoot as a diversion, Jeonghan felt a scream-laugh clawing out his throat.

(He choked it down, of course; he wasn’t demented.)

“Fine,” he choked out.

He could tell Seungcheol didn’t believe him.

“Photographer,” Jeonghan said, which had no meaning, what was he saying? “was...”

How do you describe that, the feeling of intense, prolonged violation? It wasn’t like Jeonghan had never been in editorials or on covers or in fashion shows where he had to imagine he wanted to fuck the person he was looking at, where he had to ooze sex. But there were photographers who treated it as just another day on the job, and photographers who didn’t know how to separate the two. Just because a model looked like they wanted to fuck you during the shoot didn’t mean they actually did.

“Handsy?” Seungcheol asked, faux-airy, like Jeonghan couldn’t see right through him and his hot air.

Jeonghan didn’t know what to say so he hummed it off and looked at his phone again. “Yours?” he finally offered, lame, awkward.

Seungcheol made a comment about the clothes not being great and Jeonghan grabbed onto this like a drowning man to a lifeboat. Clothes – that was something he could talk about, something he could enjoy talking about.

“Can I see?”

Seungcheol, downer that he was, informed Jeonghan that he couldn’t because of the contract. Jeonghan wasn’t paying much attention because the smell of the instant noodles was wafting towards him and it smelled ridiculously good. All that sodium, so thick he could practically taste it from the couch.

Seungcheol asked him again, why he was here.

“It gets lonely in big apartments, you know,” Jeonghan said in a burst of honesty. “Especially if you live by yourself.”

“Yeah?” Seungcheol asked. “What kind of lonely?”

Time to backtrack. Jeonghan hadn’t intended on turning that into a pickup line but he was here to wipe Kim Minhyuk from his body, so why not take the opportunity? Jeonghan slid himself off the couch and slipped his phone in his pants pocket, eyes fixed on Seungcheol. Not even the instant noodles could distract him now.

“Cold,” he said lightly. “Can’t take up all that space by myself, you know?”

“Hm?” Seungcheol said as Jeonghan came around the kitchen counter. “I wouldn’t know, you spend so much time here that you’re practically a roommate--”

Jeonghan shut him up with his own mouth, desperately trying to fill what felt empty inside him with Seungcheol; Seungcheol’s mouth, Seungcheol’s arms, Seungcheol’s body.

It was what he tried every time. Verdict was still out on whether it worked.

* * *

Jeonghan stood in the grocery store aisle and stared at his phone.

His little shopping cart was nearly empty, filled with only bare necessities; various vegetables and fruits and smoothie ingredients, protein shakes and a few cigarette packs tossed in there as well, toiletries and his favourite shampoo.

His agent had just texted and forwarded an email that asked him to work with Kim Minhyuk again and all Jeonghan could think of doing was throwing up the minimal breakfast he’d just consumed, sliced strawberries and apples churning in his stomach.

Without even thinking about it, he pressed the little call symbol and held his phone up to his ear, right there next to the condoms and lube and nicotine patches in the grocery store.

“Jeonghan?”

“I don’t want to,” he said, his words playing bumper cars as they tumbled out of his mouth, his tone high-pitched and whiny. He sounded like a child, a kindergartner who didn’t want to go to school and then didn’t want to come home, the kind of child that cried at drop-off and pickup alike. A nuisance. A hassle. A high-maintenance, diva celebrity.

And maybe he was.

“Why,” his agent replied flatly.

“Because he’s a creep, that’s why,” Jeonghan replied, nearly hissing under his breath. “He --” Jeonghan nearly outed the other man over a phone call to his agent but shoved the words back in his mouth and took a moment to think it over.

Would Kim Minhyuk’s career be destroyed by him telling his agent that the photographer had come on to him?

(Honestly, probably not. And if it was, good. The man was a creep to men and women alike. He’d seen the looks on some of the staffers’ faces, like they were skittish rabbits unwilling to get too close to a threat. Once bitten, twice shy.)

“He tried to come on to me,” Jeonghan confessed, like this was some terribly dirty secret that he had to keep hushed.

“Kim Minhyuk is a good man,” his agent began. “Everyone says and does weird or creepy things sometimes. Are you sure you didn’t misinterpret it?”

“Yes,” Jeonghan replied heavily. “He kissed me, there’s no other way to interpret that.”

“Why would he do that anyway?”

“I don’t fucking know,” Jeonghan finally said, exasperation leaking into his voice. “Okay? I don’t fucking know, and I don’t need to spend time thinking about all the reasons a messed-up pervert decided I was worth targeting. All I need to know is that it won’t happen again, because I’m not working with him.”

“You could think of strategies to avoid him and still do the shoot --”

“If you schedule me for a shoot with him,” Jeonghan threatened lowly, “I won’t go. And you can be the one to clean up that mess.”

“Have it your way then. I’m just trying to help you, Jeonghan. Remember that. Don’t let something like squeamishness get in the way of your career.” And the line went silent.

Jeonghan let out a shuddering breath he didn’t know he had been holding and dropped his phone back in his pocket.

(The thing was, he couldn’t drive the image of Kim Minhyuk finding new prey out of his head. Jeonghan had already hit a good point in his career, where he could afford to lay down the law like that and declare _no, I won’t do it_ without much consequence. But what about whoever took his place on that shoot, fresh meat and new to the scene, some bright-eyed innocent who still hadn’t seen the festering underbelly of the industry? What about them?)

“Jeonghan-hyung?” A voice said from behind him, and Jeonghan turned around in surprise.

“Soonyoung,” Jeonghan replied, voice still a little hollow. “What are you doing here?”

“Buying groceries,” Soonyoung said, gesturing vaguely at his cart. “Same as you. Everybody needs to buy the important stuff, you know. The stuff that’s needed for survival.” The younger man casually slid a row of condoms into his cart and Jeonghan felt his mouth curl up a little involuntarily.

“If you wanna survive you’re going to need to buy a lot of lube, Soonyoung,” Jeonghan quipped.

“Aw, hyung, who knew you cared so much about little ol’ me and my ass?”

Jeonghan let his eyes flutter shut in exasperation for just a moment. “That’s not what I meant, Soonyoung,” he said, but the younger man was already way past him.

“Are you going to help me pick?”

“No,” he replied, but tipped a bottle of flavoured lube picked at random into Soonyoung’s cart, intent on picking the strangest thing possible and seeing if Soonyoung would go through with it.

“Whisky dick, hyung?” Soonyoung read out, voice laden with disbelief.

“Hey, you two seem to like drinking,” Jeonghan commented, snatching a box of condoms for himself.

“I’m actually going to buy this, you know,” Soonyoung said.

“Good,” Jeonghan replied. “That’s what I wanted. Just me, angel Jeonghan, spicing up my lovely dongsaeng’s sex life.”

Soonyoung just tipped his head back and laughed, and laughed, and laughed.

Later, when they were loitering near the alcohol and cigarettes (highways to hell, if the priests and his contract were to be believed), Soonyoung trying to decide what kind of soju he wanted and if he wanted to try out some makgeolli, the younger man posed a question, almost casual in its deliberateness.

“So, hyung,” Soonyoung began, “what was all that about anyway?”

“What?” Jeonghan replied, feigning stupidity.

“The phone call.”

His blood ran cold, the chill sneaking in like the bite of winter air, freezing him from the inside out, until he could almost believe the magazine pictures of him, the ones where he looked as marmoreal as a Greek bust, as cold as the Han River in the wintertime, exposed to the wind and the air.

Denial. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Soonyoung just stared at him, clearly disbelieving.

Anger. “Why are you asking anyway?”

Still no reply.

Bargaining. “Soonyoung, ask me literally anything else.”

“Even for details of your sex life?”

“First, I don’t officially have one, and second, it’s straight sex that you probably wouldn’t want to hear about because you think it’s gross.”

“Hyung, I’m offended.”

“You once wouldn’t let your sister put her head on your shoulder because it ‘looked too straight’.”

“...okay, fair enough.”

Depression. The emptiness inside him counted for that, right?

Acceptance. “Okay, fine. I was talking to my agent. I didn’t want to go on a shoot with a certain photographer because he’s a perverted creep, but my agent was pushing for me to go and so I had to put my foot down.”

There. All the stages of grief, been there, done that, did he still have to think about it now?

Soonyoung tilted his head. “The photographer was a perverted creep? How do you know?”

“He came on to me at work, is how I know.”

“So you think he’s a perverted creep because he’s gay and he came on to you,” Soonyoung said, eyes now cold.

“No, I think he’s a perverted creep because he kissed me without my permission and after I told him to stop,” Jeonghan replied, his anger leaking into his voice.

(Why was it so hard for people to understand?)

“And I don’t think he’s gay either, but frankly, I don’t care. He’s just a shitty guy. All the staffers are scared of him. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had tried something on one of the female staffers before.”

“Sorry, hyung,” Soonyoung said, and his eyes had thawed a little but not much.

“You don’t mean it.”

“No,” Soonyoung admitted, heaving a case of soju into his cart. “I don’t.”

* * *

The music was so loud it made his head hurt, or maybe that was the drink in his hands.

He wasn’t supposed to drink. Ever. According to his contract’s morality clause, he couldn’t drink or smoke or do anything scandalous. Afterparties were kind of scandalous, but then again, they were also officially sponsored by brands for models and audience after the show, so it wasn’t that bad, right?

Besides, it was nearly impossible to get by in this world without a little bit of drugs; be that alcohol, nicotine, or something else entirely. The drinking culture in his home country was ingrained deep into its people. Jeonghan couldn’t go to social events without being offered a drink, and if he accepted it, so what?

There was nothing else to do. He didn’t even know why he was here. He might as well drink a little (a lot) to get by. Jeonghan just did what he needed to get by.

He knew almost everyone in the room, dancing and drinking and dying. But he didn’t know if he was really friends with a single one.

Case in point: drunk off his ass Kim Mingyu, sauntering up to him with his giant stature and a drink of his own. “Hey hyung,” Mingyu yelled over the music. “How are you?”

“Fine,” Jeonghan replied, pushing himself off the bar, raising his glass. “I have my good friend here to keep me company.”

Mingyu’s laugh was too fake and too sober, the notes a little flat. Jeonghan could do better.

“You’re so funny, hyung,” and Jeonghan was just waiting for Mingyu to be out with it and ask for whatever he wanted. A favour? A date? Jeonghan was a sun in a world of stars, technically one of them but better and more important, and so he often got asked for favours and gifts like this, as if he was some sort of vending machine.

Mingyu wasn’t even good at flattery, one tactic that Jeonghan was particularly susceptible to.

“Do you know Seo Myungho, the photographer?”

“I know of him,” Jeonghan said warily. “Why?”

“Well, I was actually wondering if you could mention me to him?” Mingyu asked, cautious. “If I worked with him I think we would click really well --”

“And you think you can get a cover if you do it with him,” Jeonghan cut in.

Mingyu flushed.

“I didn’t mean do it like that, you filthy child,” Jeonghan said, flicking Mingyu’s forehead, and he had to wonder for a bare moment, if Mingyu was more _interested_ than a simple ‘interested’. “But you think you can get ahead by doing a shoot with Seo Myungho.”

“He does really good photos, and he’s doing really well lately,” Mingyu said, as if he needed to explain himself to get a favour that Jeonghan was never going to give anyway.

“So you want to hitch your wagon to him, is what you’re saying,” Jeonghan replied. “I’m going to need more to deal with you,” and he tilted his long neck back in a single motion, almost inhaling the drink in one go.

He didn’t know if the burn felt pleasant or terrible, or maybe a particularly high mixture of both.

“Mingyu,” Jeonghan began, “I’m going to give you some advice, even though I don’t _really_ like you,” that was the alcohol kicking in, “don’t run around chasing a shooting star, alright? That’s what fame is. Just because someone is popular now doesn’t mean it will last. You’ve been in this industry for a while. You know what I mean.”

Mingyu looked like he wanted to take notes, and it made Jeonghan want to laugh.

“For all you know, Seo Myungho could be felled by scandal tomorrow,” Jeonghan pointed out. “If you get the opportunity to work with him, great. If you don’t, so what? It’s not like you’re running out of shoots or shows.”

“Do you know something about Seo Myungho?” Mingyu asked, eyebrows furrowed. “He’s in a scandal?”

“No, Mingyu,” Jeonghan groaned, frustrated. “I’m saying that he _could_ be. You don’t know that much about him. Why are you chasing him anyway? Do you really want to work with him that badly?”

“My agent thinks it would be a good idea,” Mingyu shrugged, finally sipping from his drink.

“So you decided to ask me to set you two up?”

“Yeah,” Mingyu shrugged. “We’re friends, right, hyung?”

“If you can call it that,” Jeonghan muttered, more to himself than to his dongsaeng. Mingyu was like this all the time; easy smile, tall stature, requests for favours always falling out of his mouth. Friendship was a give and take, and Mingyu was more of a baby that you didn’t want; all take, take, take, all the time, until sometimes you just wanted to pick him up and smash his head open against a convenient rock.

Not that Jeonghan had the muscle to pick up Kim Mingyu, but. It was tempting.

“See you later, hyung,” Mingyu chirped, obnoxious, and slipped back into the crowd.

Jeonghan glanced forlornly at his empty glass, but didn’t ask for another.

* * *

Harsh breaths, bright lights, loud music. Panicked hands, sweaty people, a mess on the vanity.

 _Welcome to the backstage of a fashion show,_ Jeonghan thought. It had been worse before, when the show was still going. Now, the show was over. Jeonghan was changed out of his clothes, the most garish parts of his makeup hastily wiped off. The customary thing for models and audience alike after a show was to go out and find an afterparty to kill time at, a bucket of paint (metaphorical, usually) to streak the town with.

Jeonghan still didn’t know if he was going to go, not after last time.

As he stepped out of the backstage area and breathed in the harsh city air, mixed with gasoline and cigarette smoke and probably numerous other pollutants, he caught sight of some other models streaming out from the other shows going on during Seoul Fashion Week.

Female models, tall and skinny with elongated limbs, and these particular models were in a group with the creep Kim Minhyuk himself.

Most of them were evidently new, from the way they acted around the photographer, like he was a god that they were going to worship, supplicate, offer sacrifices to in the hopes of boosting their career. He knew the feeling.

“Where are all of you headed off to?” Jeonghan asked brightly, ingratiating himself into the group like it was second nature instead of a deliberate action.

“Afterparty,” one of the models replied, a slight accent hindering her voice. She looked painfully young; probably only three years younger than him but with the wide, doe eyes of a child, shiny black hair, a small face.

“I’m Jeonghan,” he said, all but ignoring Kim Minhyuk behind him. “Yoon Jeonghan.”

“Joo Kyulkyung,” the girl with the accent replied.

Kim Minhyuk had snaked an arm over Jeonghan’s shoulder and Jeonghan just as easily stepped out and away from him, circling around to the model on the photographer’s other side.

“Hong Jisoo,” she said before Jeonghan could ask.

“Are you guys all new?” he asked.

“Yeah,” the girls replied. “First fashion week here,” Jisoo elaborated. “Kim Minhyuk-ssi is just showing us around.”

“You know,” Jeonghan said, the suspicious gaze of Kim Minhyuk burning into his back, “if you want someone to show you around...”

He didn’t need to finish the sentence for them to get what he was saying.

“I’m sure Minhyuk-ssi is great and all, but don’t you want a model to show you the modelling scene?”

Hong Jisoo brought her mouth near his ear, breath tickling the shell of his ear. “Don’t try to pull anything on me,” she said, and Jeonghan barely had time to admire her sass before she peeled them off from the rest of the group.

“Why were you doing that?” Jisoo asked as they wandered by the Han River, cars whizzing by. It was only October, the leaves discarding their trees and the river still watery instead of icy. They were going to go to the afterparty, maybe, eventually. He didn’t think it really mattered. Jeonghan had seen too many of those parties, alcohol and smoke and sweaty yet attractive people smashed into one room, to be too interested in attending them.

“Doing what?” he replied, pausing to slide a pack of cigarettes out of his coat pocket. He shook them, the smoker’s sign for _want some?_ Jisoo’s eyes slid down to the cigarettes, and Jeonghan watched her face as she deliberated for a split second and then stretched her hand out. Jeonghan tapped two out of the pack and handed one to her.

Jisoo had her own lighter, and Jeonghan lit his cigarette with her lighter, battered and red and old. Hong Jisoo might be new to the scene but new to smoking she was not.

“Cockblocking Kim Minhyuk. You two have some sort of rivalry or something going on?”

Jeonghan couldn’t help the laugh that flew out of his mouth along with his cigarette smoke. “He’s a creep,” was what he settled on, and no matter how many times he repeated that description, he didn’t get bored of it. “Kim Minhyuk is the workplace harasser type.”

“Oh.”

A beat, then, “So you were trying to be chivalrous?”

“I guess you could put it that way,” Jeonghan said, blowing out another ring of smoke thoughtfully. “He’s indiscriminate. Most of the people that have been around for a while know to be careful. You guys though...”

He trailed off to ash his cigarette, watch the smouldering embers fall the long, long way to the river below.

“You didn’t know.”

“...I don’t want them to be stuck with him,” Jisoo said in a smaller voice.

“Neither do I, but who knows,” Jeonghan said, inhaling. “Maybe he’s better drunk.”

“Maybe.”

They stayed there for a while, ashing into the Han River, the cars behind them flying past. Jeonghan and Jisoo exchanged anecdotes, silly little stories. Jeonghan ended up recounting most of his party repertoire; that time he did this-and-this while drunk and Seungcheol had to drag him out and back into their dorm, that time he’d left a project to the last minute and Seungcheol had cleaned up his mess, dropped him in his chair and told him to get his ass in gear (and he’d actually received a 90 on that project), that time he was playing truth or dare and got Seungcheol to do a sexy girl group dance and then Seungcheol got him back and made him do Gee (usually this resulted in a request for him to do the dance again, but Jisoo didn’t ask and so he didn’t dance).

“You know, I thought you were looking for a pretty girl to pick up.”

As Jeonghan looked at Jisoo, he couldn’t help thinking that maybe he was. Maybe that was why he’d been pulled to the group of girls walking with Kim Minhyuk. Models were all pretty, but Jisoo was absurdly so, with feline eyes and a curved mouth, still red and glossy with leftover makeup from the show.

Would it be so bad to give in?

“Who said I wasn’t?” Jeonghan replied, and as Jisoo turned to look at him strangely, he leaned in and pressed his mouth over hers; gently, carefully, but there.

He hadn’t expected her to step away and laugh.

“Jeonghan,” Jisoo said between giggles, although she at least had the decency to cover her mouth.

“You don’t like me,” she informed him.

“I just kissed you on the mouth, that seems like I like you to me,” Jeonghan protested.

“Yeah, well,” she replied, still taking it all as a joke. “I’m telling you right now, you don’t. You like your friend Seungcheol.”

“Do not,” Jeonghan replied immediately, the voice of his inner child seeping out again.

“Oh, you really do,” she said, and laughed again. “You should hear the way you talk about him.”

“We’re just friends,” Jeonghan protested. “It’s just because you’re American, you think everybody’s gay, but that’s not how it works here, Jisoo, people aren’t _like that._ ”

The look Jisoo levelled at him was enough to make him relent.

“Okay,” Jeonghan said, and maybe the night and the smoke and the tiny bit of vodka he’d guzzled before he left the show were getting to his head, or maybe the words just needed to be said. “Maybe we fuck. A lot. But that’s just two bros getting each other off, that’s not, like, an actual serious emotional thing --”

“It totally is,” Jisoo said. “Maybe you’re scared of it, but you denying it doesn’t mean it’s not true.”

“But I don’t like him?” Jeonghan said, and he hated the uncertainty in his voice. “I’m not even gay, Jisoo.”

Jisoo seemed to decide that this wasn’t worth her time (because she was peddling conspiracy theories, that was why) and sighed. “If you say so,” she replied, and dropped her cigarette to the ground. It was burnt almost to the filter.

“You have another?”

“Yeah, why?” Jeonghan asked, cigarette already sliding into his palm.

“I’m going to need an entire pack to deal with all this,” she said as she lit up, gesturing her cigarette in his vague direction.

“Honestly, so am I,” he replied, and lit another of his own.

* * *

Jisoo’s words coloured every encounter with Seungcheol after that no matter how badly he tried to push them out of his head. He’d never doubted his sexual orientation until he’d talked to her, had managed the mental feat of ‘fucking a guy on the regular’ being compatible with ‘100% straight’ in his head.

Soonyoung invited him over to his and Jihoon’s apartment a little while after Seoul Fashion Week, citing the strange supermarket encounter and needing to ‘thank his hyung for picking such an interesting flavour of lube’, which Jeonghan could only interpret as Jihoon wanting revenge for Jeonghan goading Soonyoung into buying whiskey dick lube.

That, or he actually had spiced up their sex life and Soonyoung was being serious.

Jeonghan wasn’t sure which he preferred.

Either way, this was an opportunity to ask the two gays he knew that were actually in a healthy, committed relationship about his problems. Not that he actually would; Jeonghan knew his own delaying tactics well enough for that. Later, he would think. Not now. Also, Jihoon wasn’t exactly the most emotionally attuned of people, so there was that.

When Jeonghan arrived at his friends’ apartment, only Jihoon opened the door.

“Hey Jihoon,” he greeted as he let himself in, shoes toed off and left by the door.

“Jeonghan,” the shorter man replied.

“Where’s Soonyoung?”

“Getting groceries,” Jihoon said, headphones around his neck. “He wants to do like barbecue or something, I don’t know.”

“That’s nice,” Jeonghan said, but his stomach suddenly felt full.

(There were a million fattening things in barbecue meat and sauce, and probably thousands of carcinogens. Jeonghan couldn’t afford that sort of indulgence. But it was only one night, one dinner. How bad could it be?)

“You have anything you really wanna eat? I’ll text him,” Jihoon asked, phone already out.

“Mushrooms?” Jeonghan tried.

“C’mon, Jeonghan.”

“Bulgogi,” Jeonghan said, finally giving in to his stomach. It wasn’t as bad as really swinging the other way and saying samgyeopsal (he didn’t even want to think about the fat in samgyeopsal), but the guilt still burned a hole in his stomach.

“Hey, Jeonghan,” Jihoon said, something subtle in his voice changing. Jihoon had looked up from his phone, tucked it away in his sweatpants’ pockets, presumably done texting Soonyoung.

(Jeonghan remembered that Jihoon used to wear sweatpants every day in university, seemed to live in them, like all university students. It was how Seungcheol and Jihoon had met, which had led to Jeonghan and Jihoon meeting, uneasy then, uneasy now, for reasons neither of them verbalized. Jeonghan didn’t even know, besides the fact that Jihoon seemed to be fundamentally uncomfortable with him. Something about him rubbed Jihoon the wrong way. Maybe it was because Jeonghan was an outside intruder, the straight in their group of gays.)

“Yeah?”

“Don’t fuck around with Seungcheol like this,” Jihoon said suddenly, eyes bright and harsh.

“Like what,” Jeonghan replied, flat and tired.

“Like he doesn’t matter. Like he’s just a piece of ass for you to have some fun with and then ditch, leave to wallow around in his own feelings, like you can come back every time and be forgiven and do it all over again.” Jihoon’s words slammed themselves against his chest and his ears and his head, a full out assault.

“We’re friends,” Jeonghan said, voice hollow even to his own ears.

“You’re fuck buddies,” Jihoon corrected, “and hopefully you two won’t even be that soon.”

(His blood and his breath were too loud in his ears.)

“I shouldn’t be saying this,” Jihoon acknowledged, “because Seungcheol is stupid enough to care about you so much that he wants to protect you. But you know what, I care about him, and so I’m going to say it anyway.”

Jeonghan could already tell there was no use trying to interject.

“You’re _using_ him,” Jihoon said, enunciation slow, like he thought Jeonghan didn’t have a bachelor’s degree in something pretentiously liberal arts, like Jeonghan was stupid and illiterate and shallow. A vacuous airhead who only knew how to walk and pose and smile without smiling.

All of a sudden he was blinking back tears, but either Jihoon didn’t notice or didn’t care.

“You’re using him and his feelings so you can get off or find some sort of satisfaction, I don’t know. I don’t care. But it’s disgusting and toxic and manipulative, and you need to stop.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Jeonghan said, and his voice suddenly felt very small.

“ _You_ ,” Jihoon said, frustrated. “You are fucking around with Seungcheol, alright? And you ‘no homo’ it every time, because your head is so far up your own ass that you can’t see the truth that’s right in front of you. You keep doing this, and he’s finally going to listen to me and just leave. He deserves better,” and here, Jihoon seemed to relent and let his slight sympathy for Jeonghan come out, “hell, _you_ deserve better. Better than denial and pretending.”

“Well, maybe I want him to leave!” Jeonghan replied, words bubbling forth from an unknown source. He felt like a long-dormant volcano now spewing lava everywhere, unaware and uncaring of who it hit. Jeonghan was throwing words and sentiments everywhere that he didn’t even know he had.

“I mean,” and here the babble was starting to come out, “why should he stay anyway, we’re not a thing, there’s nothing there. Seungcheol is the only person left and I’m just waiting for the beat to drop, Jihoon,” his voice was warbling and high-pitched, hysterical, “I’m just waiting for him to finally figure out that he can live without me, that he’s better off without me. Nobody cares, Jihoon, except for him, I’m just waiting for him to stop. I know I’m too much. I know.”

Jihoon’s only reply, at first, was a bitter laugh. “But he can’t live without you. You’ve made it so he can’t. You expect him to be around all the time, to always be there for you, so he is. You should see the way he talks about you, the things he sends. You’re in his head all the time. You take up all that space, and you barely think about him.”

“You don’t know what I think about,” Jeonghan said, voice suddenly cold. “You don’t know how often I think of him, or how little. So don’t pretend you do. If you don’t know what’s in my head, that just means I’m doing my job well.”

( _I’m not supposed to think.)_

“We’re not supposed to know what models think about?”

“I’m supposed to be a pretty face, Jihoon, not a pretty brain.”

Jihoon let out a small sigh. “You have to know you two can’t continue like this.”

“Jihoon,” Jeonghan replied, voice trembling, “I’m just waiting for him to leave.”

“Jeonghan,” Jihoon parroted, “he can’t.”

They didn’t say much after that. By the time Soonyoung got back, plastic bags heaving with groceries, Jeonghan and Jihoon had returned to a semblance of normalcy, sitting opposite each other at the kitchen table as Jihoon told stories about the latest entertainment company he’d sold a song to, what his last recording session had been like, the little ticks and habits of the idol groups that he had worked with. Jeonghan reciprocated with stories of overworked staff, demanding photographers, cogs in an industry that pushed and pushed and pushed until its latest toy broke and they got a new one.

“Hey, hyung, Jihoon,” Soonyoung said, setting the meat and vegetables out on the table, the grill already between Jeonghan and Jihoon. “Having fun?”

“Yeah,” Jeonghan said, smile stretching over his mouth, and Soonyoung seemed to take it at face value.

As the meat cooked and the mushrooms slowly changed colours, Jeonghan watched his two friends chat with each other, deposit food in the other’s bowl, smile at the other when they thought nobody was looking. It looked a lot like love, and Jeonghan found something in his heart twinge at that.

(Was that what he and Seungcheol looked like, to others? Were they that obvious? And if they were, how much longer would it be until people knew, until his personal downfall became the destruction of his career? Because he could take Seungcheol leaving. But he couldn’t take losing the only thing he had, no matter how fleeting it might be.)

“You eat a lot, for a model,” Jihoon commented, barbs hidden behind casualness. Casual. Casualty. Jeonghan was a casualty in the war between Seungcheol and his career, and in the end, whichever won, part of Jeonghan would be dead.

Jeonghan forced a laugh. “Yeah, I guess,” he said, and put his chopsticks down.

* * *

“Cheollie,” Jeonghan said from across the dinner table in Seungcheol’s apartment one evening, and his friend looked up from his rice.

“Yeah?”

Too many words rushed into his mouth, jumbled all together, and in the end, none of them came out. Instead, only the most inane; “Do you wanna watch Train to Busan later?”

“...you know I’m scared of zombies,” Seungcheol replied through a mouthful of rice.

“Awww,” Jeonghan cooed, all serious thoughts out of his mind. “Do you need someone to hug you, Cheol? We can even cuddle if that will make you feel better.”

“You know what would make me feel better? No zombies.”

“Come on, Cheollie,” Jeonghan began to bring out his wheedling voice, chopsticks abandoned over a bowl still nearly full with rice.

(He didn’t know why the man even bothered pretending Jeonghan was going to eat his food.)

“Cuddles!” He said, trying to be enticing. “And you can like, hug me or close your eyes if you get scared.”

“...fine.”

“Great,” Jeonghan said, flashing a smile, and slid out of his chair so he could set up Train to Busan. By the time he was done setting up, blankets and pillows all piled up so the couch was at optimal movie viewing capacity, Seungcheol had finished eating and put the dishes away, leaving them to rot in the sink for a little while. The other man slid under the blankets next to Jeonghan and snuggled into his side and all Jeonghan could feel was a sudden surge of warmth and affection.

“There’s something on your face,” Jeonghan said, offhand.

“What?” Seungcheol said, fingers already reaching up to brush around his mouth.

( _Beauty_ was the first, cheesy line that came to his mind, but he had meant it literally; there was rice on Seungcheol’s face.)

“I’ll get it for you,” Jeonghan finally said, unable to keep the affection out of his voice. And why should he? Friends did things like this, watched movies and told friends when there was something on their face. It was a totally platonic thing to do.

Jeonghan reached out to swipe the grain of rice from Seungcheol’s face but couldn’t resist pressing a sudden kiss to the other man’s mouth. The look of bare surprise on Seungcheol’s face made the fondness well up again.

“I got it,” he said blithely, showing Seungcheol the grain of rice.

“So you did,” Seungcheol said, seemingly bewildered but evidently rolling with it. “Let’s watch the movie now, Jeonghan.”

So they did, and every time Seungcheol screamed, Jeonghan stifled a little laugh, but also maybe hugged the other man just a little tighter.

Because that was safe. That was platonic, and easily explained. Right?

* * *

“Hey, Jeonghan,” Jisoo said to him one day after an haute couture show; they were in a foreign city, a foreign country, full of white people speaking strange words. Jeonghan didn’t know how to express the kind of relief that flooded him when he hears words in Korean instead of English or French; it was a sense of coming home, of sinking into a bubble bath after a long day at work. Like washing off all the pretension and falling back into his usual self.

“Jisoo,” Jeonghan breathed out. “God, I have missed you.”

“No, you missed my Korean,” Jisoo replied flippantly. Not that _she_ was in the same predicament he was; she was American by birth, after all, had lived many years in California. Her English was just as good as her Korean, better, even. Jisoo was a fish out of water here but less so, because she had that skeleton key of language; English.

“Okay, yes, but also you.”

“I don’t believe you,” she said lightly, and pulled on his sleeve to get his attention. His eyes had been easily diverted, pulled by the sheer gravitational force of a passing makeup staffer. She had eyes like Seungcheol’s, and it had caught his attention long enough for him to stop listening to Jisoo.

“Let’s go out,” Jisoo announced.

“Go out where?” Jeonghan asked, picking up his backpack. “To the Seine? Cross the bridges and pretend to be all lovey-dovey?”

“Ew, no,” Jisoo wrinkled her nose. “Around the Seine yeah but not the lovey-dovey part. You don’t like me, remember?”

“I like you plenty, Jisoo,” he replied, and ruffled her hair as they stepped into the night.

Paris in the winter was a special kind of beautiful; Christmas lights beautiful, with that sort of soft, faded edges aesthetic that invoked the feeling you got when you were driving home late at night through a city covered by the early darkness that came in the winter, these festive pinpricks of light seeming to light something inside your soul. It was a feeling of warmth in the winter, and even though Jeonghan had no specific fond memories attached to Christmas like the Europeans that came through here all the time, he could appreciate it.

But it didn’t feel like home.

(He missed Seoul, and everything that came with it. Korean food, the Korean language, the relative lack of white people, the bustle of the night markets, the running subways. Seungcheol, if he was honest. It was hard not to look at the city of lights, famed for its beauty, and not think of his photographer. Seungcheol would love Paris. Seungcheol loved beautiful things, liked them better with a hint of imperfection, of brokenness. Maybe that was why he had stayed with Jeonghan for so long, Jeonghan who was so broken but looked so pretty.)

“Paris is prettier than we are,” Jisoo said, voice filled with a strange sort of awe. “And I’m not jealous of her.”

“Are you usually jealous of people prettier than you?”

“Well, no,” Jisoo admitted, “I’d never survive a day in this industry if I did. But. Paris is prettier than we are, and I can’t find any hint of jealousy inside me.”

“You’d have to be a special level of petty to be jealous of a city’s beauty,” Jeonghan pointed out, the streetlights casting little pyramids of light onto the sidewalk, the two of them passing in and out, in and out. Visible one moment, invisible the next. If they walked on a different part of the sidewalk, the only part of them that would pass under the light would be an elbow, a hand, a stray piece of hair.

But a stranger from far away would only see what was under the light, and think it was representative of the entire person.

He knew what that was like.

“That’s why I’m jealous of Paris for you,” he declared. “How dare she outshine me. Or you.”

“You don’t need to be jealous for me, or fight people for me. Or cities. I can take care of myself.”

“You’re my _hoobae_ , Jisoo,” Jeonghan said. “I met you because I was trying to protect you. I think it ended up setting a precedent.” Jisoo sort of laughed and sighed and didn’t continue down that path any longer. They crossed the next bridge they saw, and came to the other side of the Seine.

They smoked a few cigarettes, passed the pack and the lighter between each other as they passed over the Seine multiple times. Where they were going, he had no clue. They’d find their way eventually. Jeonghan had been to so many cities like this, beautiful European cities built around a river, wandered around late at night without fear.

It was an absurd sort of freedom, he realized as he looked at Jisoo, to be able to go freely wherever you wanted whenever you wanted. He knew Jisoo wouldn’t dare wander aimlessly like this at night in an unfamiliar city by herself. She wouldn’t even in Seoul, or Los Angeles.

He wondered what it was like to feel constantly under threat, an unwelcome guest on the streets and sidewalks of a city. It couldn’t be pleasant.

“Is your friend,” she started, then stopped.

“My friend?”

“Is your friend Seungcheol gay?” she finally said.

Jeonghan felt his face close off, felt his own retreat behind his walls. “Why are we talking about this?”

“I asked first,” she said quickly, a childish answer, one that Jeonghan himself had used many times on the subject of this sudden conversation.

“Yes,” Jeonghan said after a few moments of deliberation. Jisoo wasn’t the homophobic type, as he already knew, and it wasn’t like she would tell. Besides, it wasn’t a terrible thing if Seungcheol’s orientation did get out. Seungcheol himself didn’t care much about it.

(Not the way Jeonghan himself did; if anyone ever breathed a word of his fucking Seungcheol to the press – not even the press, just someone in a position to ruin his career and his life – then he’d be over. And, probably, so would they.)

“He’s known since we first met. I remember we were roommates in university and this kid with a giant,” here, Jeonghan mimed a big explosion around his head, “pouf of hair comes in and he just sets his suitcase down and says, ‘Hi, I’m Choi Seungcheol. I’m gay. If you have a problem with that, I don’t think we can be roommates,’ and he just came out to me.”

“He sounds like a pretty confident guy,” Jisoo commented.

“The funny thing is that he isn’t usually,” Jeonghan mused. “I’m usually the more, uh, bright one out of the two of us. The more extra. But I guess it’s the one thing he wasn’t about to compromise for anyone.”

“And he told his parents and everything?”

“It wasn’t my business at the time,” Jeonghan shrugged. “He doesn’t talk about them that much, but he doesn’t seem to have any issues with them, so I don’t know. But I know Seungcheol, and if he came out right away to his university roommate on his first day in a new city with five times more people than his hometown, then he would have come out to his parents. If not before he came out to me, then after he finished university.”

“Why after?” Jisoo asked, nose and eyebrows scrunched as she tried to figure it out in her head.

“Don’t do that, you’re going to get wrinkles,” Jeonghan said almost absently, a hand passing over Jisoo’s forehead and nose in an attempt to smooth her face out.

“You’re not my agent,” Jisoo nearly snapped, and Jeonghan’s hand recoiled as if she actually had.

“Touchy,” he commented lightly. “Is your agent not treating you well?”

“He just wants the best for me,” Jisoo repeated the phrase like she had heard it too many times, and Jeonghan decided to leave the subject well enough alone, maybe do some sniffing around by himself later, on his own time, figure out what was what with Jisoo’s agent.

“Anyway, he might have done it after because his parents helped pay for his university.”

“Are you saying they would have cut him off?”

“I mean, not only was he going off to become a photographer, he was gay. If he didn’t want to become broke as well as a disappointment, he had to keep it under wraps for a while,” Jeonghan said. “University isn’t cheap, Jisoo.”

He had been through something similar with his parents; he’d studied art history, wanted to go into museum curation. Live a life surrounded by paintings and Western artists. Obviously, his parents had been much less supportive of the sudden pivot to modelling (they knew as well as he did how fleeting it was; they’d compared it to the lifespan of a flower, there for a season and gone the next), but at least he hadn’t become a broke disappointment himself.

“His parents would have actually just disowned him?” Jisoo said in astonishment.

“It’s not like your parents aren’t Korean, Jisoo,” Jeonghan finally said, a little exasperated. “You must know how it works.”

“It’s easier to pretend that’s not how it works when you’re in America, I guess,” she mumbled. “Land of the free, and all that.”

“You didn’t realize how different it was, did you,” Jeonghan said, looking at her appraisingly. Jisoo was the same age as him but at the same time, so much younger. There was still innocence left in her, those vestiges of youth that you kept for a while before adulthood took them and trampled them under its feet.

She still lived under the impression that everywhere was the same as where she had grown up. That every country was so open, so forgiving of people’s private sins.

“Korea’s a developed country,” Jisoo finally said. “I guess I never really stopped to think about whether or not being queer would be accepted. It doesn’t hurt me either way.”

(What a privilege that must be, to not think about it. With Seungcheol in his life, with the dirty secret that resided between the two of them, Jeonghan had to think about it every day. Had to calculate, and adjust, and calculate again.)

“Wait,” Jisoo said, turning to face him directly, stopping dead in the middle of the sidewalk. “If you two are fucking,” Jeonghan couldn’t help looking around them for people, but there were none listening, and definitely none that understood Korean, “and he’s gay, but you keep saying you’re not, what do you tell him? Do you tell him you’re straight?”

“I don’t need to tell him,” Jeonghan shrugged. “He knows what I am. Like I said, two bros getting each other off.”

“So you ‘no homo’ him every time you fuck,” Jisoo inferred. “Do you realize what you’re doing here, Jeonghan?”

“No?”

“You’re using him,” Jisoo said, aghast. “You care about him so much any idiot could see it, but from what I’ve been hearing it sounds like you’re using him.”

“How,” Jeonghan challenged.

“He’s gay. You two have been best friends since university, and it seems a lot like you’re just using your gay best friend to experiment with your own sexuality without any real commitment. There’s probably so many emotions tangled up between you two because of this,” Jisoo said, eyebrows furrowing as she explained her conspiracy theory to him. “Friendship is one thing and then introducing sex into it makes things complicated, Jeonghan, you have to know this. You can’t have that friendship and that physical, sexual relationship at the same time. You can’t have both, Jeonghan. And because you can’t pick either, you’re going to lose both.”

“Why does everyone think they know what’s going on with me in my head?” Jeonghan wondered out loud, thinking of Jihoon and his apartment, harsh yet similar words tumbling out of his friend’s mouth, slapping him in the face with each one. “I’m not supposed to let anyone know what I’m thinking. I’m supposed to be a blank canvas.”

“People project things onto blank slates, I guess,” Jisoo said, but she wasn’t so easily diverted. “But my point still stands. It sounds like you’re using him, Jeonghan. What’s up with your commitment issues? How hard can it be to just pick friendship or a romantic relationship?”

“You still don’t understand, do you,” Jeonghan said, his voice beginning to pick up in intensity and harshness. “This isn’t America, Jisoo. Remember when we first met? People aren’t _like that_ in Korea. Let’s pretend for a moment that I’m gay. If it ever, _ever_ , got to the wrong person’s ears, it would wind up ruining my career. Everything I have, everything I’ve worked for, everything I care about, would be wiped out. I don’t get the privilege of being gay and open about it. I don’t get to be gay at all. And I’m straight, so it’s a moot point,” Jisoo didn’t look convinced at this, “but this is what the industry is like. That’s just the truth.”

“So why fuck Seungcheol anyway?” Jisoo asked. “Why make it harder for your closeted self?”

“It’s like I don’t know how not to,” he said. “I care about him a lot, and he cares about me, and we both don’t really have sex that often. I guess it’s stress relief. Two bros getting each other off. A mutual favour.”

“That’s not what it sounds like,” she said. “It sounds like you’re nearly in a romantic relationship with him but you’re scared and in denial about what you feel.”

“Isn’t it possible to be fucking your male best friend and be straight at the same time?” Jeonghan wondered out loud.

“No, Jeonghan,” Jisoo replied, a hint of amusement slipping into her voice. “It’s really not. And I’m not about to dictate your sexuality or anything, but I’m telling you right now, you’re not straight.”

“What do you know,” he said, frustrated. “It’s my sexuality, isn’t it? If I say I’m straight, then I’m straight.”

“If you say so.”

“I do.”

“See, the thing is, I don’t believe you.”

Jeonghan sighed. “Sometimes I don’t either.”

* * *

Jeonghan didn’t expect to end up getting a shoot with Seungcheol. He’d expected a cover shoot, sure, or at least an editorial – it was a strange kind of job security that he had, but he definitely had it – but not necessarily with Seungcheol. Cheollie was still what might be politely termed an up-and-comer, a rising star. Jeonghan himself had been one of those, back when he was twenty and young. Twenty-five in the modelling world felt like fifty. Twenty-five to fashion photography was probably just twenty-five.

Sometimes, Jeonghan wondered what it would be like to live and breathe an industry that didn’t see age in such a strange manner, but it was too late to pull himself out of fashion now. He loved it, in a perverse way, loved the demands it made of him, the contortions and the clothes and the drama.

There was a twisted kind of pleasure that came of starving yourself, of standing on the scale and watching the numbers slowly tick down every day. It was a sense of accomplishment, and Jeonghan knew it was edging far too close to the abyss of ‘eating disorder’ that so many other models fell in, but he was that kind of egotistical, the stupid, heady, youthful kind; it won’t happen to me. I’m special. I’m different. I get to play at the edges and pull back in time.

It hadn’t happened yet, so he’d probably keep pushing the limits.

The morning of the shoot, Jeonghan shimmied into whatever outfit he saw first and headed out the door, eyes still six-am bleary but slowly waking up. By the time he got to the studio, Seungcheol stepping in at the same time as him, he felt more awake.

Pity. He’d hoped to sleep in the stylist’s chair, catch up a little. The more sleep he got, the better.

“Heeyeon-noona!” He said brightly as he caught sight of the stylist, Seungcheol forgotten, left to his own devices and do his work. He probably didn’t want Jeonghan around anyway. Photographers were like that; they sought you out on their own time, when they had found the words to describe their vision and impart it. Here, Seungcheol was photographer, not best friend or a craving he tried to push away. “Good to see you again.”

“Jeonghan,” the stylist said, looking up from her vanity, arranging the tools of her trade, the brushes, the powders, the creams. “Try not to sweat so much, yeah?”

Jeonghan hummed and sat himself down in the stylist’s chair, unwilling to make a commitment they both knew wasn’t possible.

“Have you worked with Seungcheol before?” Jeonghan asked, letting his eyes close as Heeyeon-noona got right to work on his face, erasing any hint of imperfection, replacing it with the face that was going to be airbrushed and edited into more perfection, spread over pages in a magazine, stare out at passersby from the cover.

(It was a strange feeling to know that people saw your face all the time inadvertently, even stranger to find your own face while you were out walking, up on a billboard or on the cover of a magazine, unexpected and familiar.)

“Uh, no. He’s pretty new, isn’t he?” Heeyeon-noona replied. “Have you?”

“No, but we’re friends. We used to be university roommates.”

“Oh, that must be nice. You two will be more comfortable with each other then, right?” Heeyeon-noona said, her usual bite taken out of her, probably due to the time of day more than anything. The later it was, the longer the shoot, the worse Heeyeon-noona got. But they all knew it, they all loved it. Jeonghan liked Heeyeon-noona at her nicest and at her worst. That was how it was. You took people as they came.

After all, you couldn’t change them, even if you wanted to.

“Yeah, and Jisoo is on the shoot too, so I think it’ll be pretty fun.”

“Junghwa’s doing Jisoo’s hair right now, actually,” Heeyeon-noona commented.

“Jisoo’s here already?”

“She got here at four, Jeonghan. You’re never going to get an earlier calltime than a female model,” Heeyeon-noona reminded him. “I’m done with you, now go get your hair done.”

Jeonghan’s hair didn’t take long, just a little bit of teasing, a little bit of styling product. He didn’t know how the hair stylists did it but they made him look good, so it didn’t really matter. Jeonghan could make himself look passable at home with his own stuff, but the stylists had magic fingers that just seemed to make his hair fall the right way and in the right lighting.

“Thank you,” he said with a smile and a bow, careful to be polite. The staff had been here longer than him, would be here longer than him; he might as well make their job a little easier. There was no way for a model to get through the world without being considerate of the staff, and Jeonghan sympathized with them and their work hours.

He could hear Jisoo and Seungcheol talking as he approached Jisoo’s dressing room. “Yeah, I guess,” he heard Seungcheol say, and it was a noncommittal, deflective kind of statement, but Jeonghan took the words and ran with them, sliding easily between the two and onto the couch.

“You guess what? Is our cute little Jisoo over here telling riddles?” He made for Jisoo’s cheek, an action he knew would never be completed but he attempted anyway, and the expected slap away came. The two of them played around, bantered, and Jeonghan’s arm came to rest on her shoulder.

“You two are pretty close,” Seungcheol said, voice unnaturally tight, and all Jeonghan could think about was Paris and Jisoo and that moment by the Seine, the streetlights and those accusatory words, _you’re using him_ , coming out of Jisoo’s mouth. _Nearly in a romantic relationship._

“Fast friends,” Jisoo replied, shrugging Jeonghan’s arm right off. He wasn’t sure if it was intended or not, but he wouldn’t put it past her.

“Hopefully it’s not awkward when the shoot starts,” Seungcheol said, but the most awkward person here was Seungcheol, the awkwardness palpable enough that Jeonghan almost wanted to take out his phone so he had an excuse to look away, preserve his friend’s dignity. But he’d seen Seungcheol in more undignified positions, stranger situations. University did things like that to you, and they’d been close for years.

Still, there was that urge to look away.

“We’re professionals,” Jisoo said.

Seungcheol looked away from Jisoo’s gaze.

“Let’s get off to styling and then we can get started.”

Jisoo stood up and headed over to the stylists with the racks of clothes, but Jeonghan stayed there, laid out on the couch next to Seungcheol for a little longer.

“Are you nervous?” Jeonghan asked, light.

“A little,” Seungcheol admitted. “It’s kind of a big deal to work with you, you know.”

“Aww,” Jeonghan cooed, reaching out to ruffle Seungcheol’s hair. “Are you intimidated by me?”

“Not you, just your big reputation.”

“You know me too well to be scared by rumours and reputation, Seungcheol,” Jeonghan said, settling down.

“Yeah,” Seungcheol said. “Yeah, I do.”

When Jeonghan gave his friend an encouraging pat on the shoulder and stood up to leave, he caught Junghwa’s eyes, turning to look at him as she rearranged her hair styling products, the curler, some hair extensions.

What he saw in Junghwa’s eyes could only be described as _You are not as subtle as you think you are._

A shiver ran down his spine despite his friendly relationship with the hair stylist, and he quickened his pace as he headed off to his own racks of clothes.

* * *

After the shoot and after Jisoo had gone home (or out for lunch, judging by the photos of food she had sent him), after Jeonghan had changed back into his street clothes, he went over to see how Seungcheol’s photos had turned out.

He looked divine. There wasn’t another way to describe it, and even though his friend hadn’t edited the photos yet, Jeonghan couldn’t help thinking that the originals were pretty damn good. He looked devastating, like the male version of a femme fatale. Like he could lure you in for a damn good night and probably leave you lonely and empty for the rest of your life, that was how unforgettable he was. It was a stylized kind of dramatic, the black and white, the highlights from the harsh lights hanging above the set.

“They look good,” he commented.

“You’re just complimenting yourself,” Seungcheol said, and Jeonghan shrugged. “I deserve them, and a guy’s gotta do what a guy’s gotta do.”

He could see Seungcheol disagreeing with him in his head.

“You wanted to say something?”

Seungcheol did his fishy mouth thing, where he opened and closed his mouth but nothing came out. Jeonghan waited and picked at the seam of his jeans.

“We can’t keep doing this.”

Wow, how specific. “Doing what?”

“Fucking and pretending it never happened,” Seungcheol said, and Jeonghan’s mouth had been open to say his usual denial of _I don’t know what you’re talking about_ , well aware that this was not a private setting, but then Seungcheol said ‘pretending it never happened’ and his mouth shut.

“If we’re fucking so much, there’s clearly some homo, Jeonghan, in me and you both. The least you could do is admit it.” It was like Jihoon all over again, all of Jeonghan’s nightmares made real.

( _He’s finally going to listen to me and just leave,_ Jihoon had said.)

All he could do was shake his head.

“I’m not gay though,” his standard words of denial, “I’m straight.”

Seungcheol looked like he believed it as much as Jisoo had in Paris. Why did all these people he knew and cared about have those same expressions on their faces when he asserted his heterosexuality? Why was it that they all saw through him so easily? Jeonghan made a living out of lies and illusions, and this was the greatest one of his career; and yet. The closet doors had become transparent to their eyes.

“Is that what we call people who fuck men now?” and if Jeonghan hadn’t been sitting down his knees would have given out on him. Seungcheol was out here _exposing_ him, exposing them, the festering hole in the fabric of this society that he’d seen before, that he’d told Jisoo about; no marriage. No freedom to live openly and honestly.

There were so many words Jeonghan could say that he choked on them and said none.

And then Seungcheol said, “You’re gay, Jeonghan. Or at least not straight, You don’t go around having sex with your male best friend when you are also male and then call it _straight_.”

Before he realized it was happening, Jeonghan was up on his feet and the chair was pushed back.

“You don’t understand,” he hissed, and he could hear his blood and breath in his ears, harsh and loud. “I _can’t_ be gay. If it gets out, I’m dead. All this would be _gone.”_

He’d said it to Jisoo and here he was saying it to Seungcheol. Everything he cared about, everything he’d worked for, his entire career; up in flames. All it took was the wrong person, the wrong reaction, the wrong words. The tiniest reaction could give it all away, and then what? He couldn’t do anything but this. Entertainment was his industry. He was in this gilded cage, like it or not, and Jeonghan actually did kind of like it. There was a rush to being in front of the camera with the beautiful clothes, to posing and tilting your head just right and walking down a catwalk, to seeing your face all of a sudden in the middle of Seoul.

Jeonghan liked that. Loved it, even. And he couldn’t see a future after he lost it. So he wasn’t going to lose it.

 _“_ So you’re not even going to be honest with yourself?”Seungcheol asked.

Jeonghan’s laugh came out sharp and bitter, like the first inhale on a cigarette.

 _“_ You know as well as I do that it’s easier to live out a persona if you keep it up forever. There is no difference between Yoon Jeonghan from Seoul and Yoon Jeonghan the model anymore. And Yoon Jeonghan the model is not gay,” he said, and he finally let himself acknowledge for a brief moment in his head that he wasn’t straight as a ruler.

 _“_ That’s a pity,” Seungcheol said after a long moment. “Because Choi Seungcheol the photographer is, and so is Choi Seungcheol from Daegu. And,” here a wry, dry smile, as if he knew better but was going to say it anyway, “I really wanted this to be something real.”

Jeonghan spent his time building walls in his head to compartmentalize things like this, shove any thoughts of being the G-word far far away from him, as if distance was enough to make it not true. Even if he kept this all a secret, as he had for so long now, that made the compartmentalization harder. And he wasn’t even the only problem.

Because Yoon Jeonghan knew Choi Seungcheol inside and out. And Seungcheol didn’t compromise that part of himself for anybody. He was gay. Some day, not even someday soon, but some day in the distant future, that future where they did become real and kept it a secret, this would happen again. Seungcheol would stand up to him again and say, I can’t do this. I want us to be real. That time, it would be a request to make themselves known to the world. To live honestly and openly.

Except they both already knew Jeonghan couldn’t.

Even if Seungcheol didn’t know or realize it now, one day, it would all fall down again. They were a sandcastle at the beach, and the tide would come in eventually and wash it all away. If not now, then later. It was inevitable.

And if they couldn’t do anything to stop it, why put themselves through that pain?

“Cheollie,” Jeonghan finally said, fond and foolish affection colouring his voice. Jeonghan couldn’t have kept it away if he tried.

“I can’t take this anymore,” he whispered.

“Honestly,” he sighed, eyes flicking up to the ceiling and then back to the other’s eyes, “neither can I.”

* * *

Junghwa asked him, at another shoot where they bumped into each other, if he and Seungcheol were close friends.

Jeonghan said his usual line about university roommates and best friends, and even though Junghwa did her look again (the you’re not subtle one he’d been graced with before he signed the death warrant for the relationship between him and Seungcheol), the line of conversation was thankfully dropped on the vanity and left to melt away, and then Heeyeon-noona wiped off his makeup for him and Jisoo pulled him away again.

The girl seemed to increasingly fill up more and more of his time, time that he used to spend at Seungcheol’s apartment or his own.

This time, he invited Jisoo over to his apartment.

“Woah,” was the first thing out of her mouth when she stepped inside. “I feel like I’m in the IKEA catalogue.”

“I know someone who actually did the IKEA catalogue,” Jeonghan said, sitting down on his couch. “Shoes,” he reminded, as Jisoo almost came further without taking her shoes off. “Who raised you? Do the Americans not take their shoes off?”

“I don’t know about the white ones, but yeah, I was raised to take my shoes off,” Jisoo said as she arranged her boots neatly by the door. “I just forgot.”

Jeonghan hummed.

“Junghwa-unnie said that something went down with you and Seungcheol,” Jisoo said, joining him on the couch, legs tucked underneath her.

“That gossip,” he said immediately, with a little more bite than he meant. “What did she tell you?”

“That you two were talking after the shoot was finished and it didn’t look like a regular friendly old conversation.”

Jeonghan considered lying for a brief moment.

“He finally did it,” Jeonghan said, and his voice was edging dangerously close to the cliff already. “I don’t have anyone left now.”

“You have other friends,” Jisoo said, “right?”

“Not outside of the industry, no,” he replied. “I did know Jihoon and Soonyoung through Seungcheol, but Jihoon is definitely coming down hard on Seungcheol’s side, and Soonyoung and I aren’t close enough for him to pick me over Jihoon’s opinion.”

“Who...”

“Jihoon is a university classmate of ours. He’s a music producer. Soonyoung’s a choreographer. He and Jihoon are dating.”

Jisoo didn’t say anything for a while and hugged a cushion to her chest instead. “So you two are over? No more fucking, no more friendship? Nothing?”

 _“_ Nothing,” and Jeonghan could see the I told you so pushing at her mouth that she was too nice to say so he got to it before her, “and you were right. I know it. You said I couldn’t pick one so I’d lose both and look at me now. I lost both.”

 _“_ Did he ask you if you wanted to date him and then you rejected him?”

“Something like that,” Jeonghan replied, unfolding a blanket and draping it over himself, offering one to Jisoo as well. “He wanted us to be something real. That means dating in secret now, sure, but I know him. He would want us to be out later, and I can’t do that. So I’m not going to hold on to a crumbling sandcastle. If I can’t stop it from happening, why drag it out, right?”

 _“_ Don’t you think the happiness would’ve been worth it?” Jisoo replied, draping her own blanket over herself.

 _“_ I was happy,” Jeonghan said, almost defensive, “he wasn’t.”

 _“_ You didn’t seem happy. You seemed scared.”

 _“_ There were good times,” Jeonghan said, and he was really defensive now.

 _“_ That’s not the same thing,” Jisoo said, deadpan.

 _“_ It almost is.”

 _“_ Yeah, well, you two were ‘almost’ a thing. But it’s not the same.” Jeonghan had never thought he’d see someone use finger quotes after he graduated high school but here they were, making a comeback.

 _“_ I could’ve lived with it, you know. The way things were.”

 _“_ No,” Jisoo said, shaking her head, “you couldn’t. It’s just that he was the one who understood himself well enough to finally admit it.”

And Jeonghan couldn’t say anymore to that, because it was true.

 _“_ I don’t know what to do without him,” he said suddenly, vulnerability he didn’t quite mean to expose poking through. “It feels like a hole in my chest.”

“Then fill it.”

 _“_ With what?”

 _“_ Whatever it takes,” Jisoo shrugged.

Jeonghan sighed. “I shouldn’t be saying this, but I have a case of really nice soju.”

(This was a terrible coping strategy, not even just in retrospect, but Jeonghan made terrible decisions all the time. Everyone had their sins. Jeonghan had cigarettes and Seungcheol. Maybe he’d be forgiven for his some day. He’d probably sin some more while he waited.)

* * *

When Seungcheol texted, Jeonghan read but never replied.

He felt like an asshole every time, but the sharp pain and realization (oh, I’m a fucking asshole) each time eventually dulled. He had meant it when he said that he didn’t want to drag the pain out. Why not just make it a clean cut? They were over, so they might as well be well and truly over.

Anything else would just be more heartache and heartbreak for him and Seungcheol, and despite how it might seem, Jeonghan cared about Seungcheol. A lot. And he knew that he’d already caused so much hurt for the other man. Maybe it was better to just not.

Eventually, though, he broke his own rule. He found Seungcheol’s clothes tucked away in one of his drawers and sat there on his bedroom floor for a long while, the Sunday sunlight sliding in through the slats of his blinds, feeling the fabric fall through his fingers. It was cheap and not all that clean, hints of food stains on the hems, but it was a piece of Seungcheol, a reminder that it hadn’t been a dream, that he had once been best friends with a wonderful, beautiful man named Choi Seungcheol, and they’d fucked all the time, and Jeonghan had ruined it, because he killed everything he touched.

In this IKEA catalogue apartment, almost everything was untouched. Nothing here showed signs of human habitation except for the couch and his bed.

Jeonghan had left all sorts of things in Seungcheol’s apartment; toothbrushes, protein shakes, shampoo. All Jeonghan had of Seungcheol were a pile of clothes and a few rom-coms. But at the same time, he couldn’t bear to keep it. It hurt to look at.

At least he knew what to do with the clothes.

Jeonghan had never felt lonelier. The hole in his chest that he’d tried to fill with soju was still there, still empty. When everyone was gone, Jisoo headed back to her own apartment, Seungcheol holed up at his computer editing the photos from the shoot, this was who he was.

Empty. Lonely. Like his apartment.

It was with trembling hands that he typed out the message to Seungcheol.

 **Jeonghan:** you left some stuff at my place

It was a heartbeat of an eternity before Seungcheol texted back, a moment dragged out forever where all he seemed to think was, why would you give those clothes away, they’re all you have left. But it was too late, and probably better to give them back anyway.

 **Seungcheol:** i’ll come get it

Jeonghan went to the bathroom, stared at himself for a hard moment in the mirror. He still looked like a supermodel, like he woke up this way, like he could step out onto the street in a garbage bag and still attract your attention. That supermodel charisma, the indelible attribute that had propelled him to the top, hadn’t left him, at least not on the outside.

But none of the shine or sparkle that Jeonghan usually summoned to bring life to that marmoreal charisma were in his eyes, and even he could see it.

Then Seungcheol’s voice came over the intercom and Jeonghan was pulled back out of the bathroom and to the door, a pile of his friend’s clothes in hand, staring at the man in front of him.

Seungcheol looked the same, and it almost made Jeonghan wonder; was he not important enough to warrant rom-com level grief? In the movies, breakups came with copious amounts of ice cream and tears and movies, puffy eyes that never left, tears that never dried. In movies, the people involved in a breakup looked like a train had run over them.

But then, this wasn’t a breakup. There had been nothing to break.

They were already broken.

“You left some clothes,” Jeonghan said quietly, mouth dry.

Seungcheol took them, just as muted as Jeonghan himself.

Sometimes there was so much history with someone that you couldn’t think of anything else. It pushed down on your chest, sat in the corner, eavesdropped on your conversations. Jeonghan’s history with Seungcheol was a presence in itself, looming over both of them, casting a shadow over their interactions. There was so much it choked his throat.

Jeonghan looked at Seungcheol and saw not just Seungcheol as he was now but all the Seungcheols he’d ever known, faces superimposed over the man in front of him.

( _All the boys I’ve ever loved_ , he thought, _were really just one man_.)

“So,” he said. “I guess this is it?”

“This is it,” Seungcheol repeated, his words heavy.

“I never told you I loved you,” Seungcheol said, and he sounded so far away, like Jeonghan could grasp at him all he wanted and never bring him back, “But I did. I do. I guess you should know that.”

It’s a confession he never asked for, maybe never wanted, but he took it anyway and tucked it inside his pocket, to take out and shine and glance at again when he thought of Seungcheol, of that brief period in his life when he had had Choi Seungcheol, fashion photographer. Best friend.

That was what this would all be one day, right? A mere moment in life. And when you looked at it, there were so many other moments, other people, that came in and out of the play of his life.

But inevitably, some were more important. Stood out a little more. Made him want to cry and scream and smash something more. And he couldn’t acknowledge what Seungcheol meant to him outside the confines of his own mind, his apartment, but he could acknowledge that Seungcheol was one of those moments that stood out.

“Was that why...” and he couldn’t finish.

“...yes.”

“But then why would you finally say something? It’s been years and you never...”

“I guess I finally realized I couldn’t live like this anymore,” Seungcheol said, and Jeonghan realized that Jisoo was more right than he gave her credit for. “You know,” a little laugh, “I kept telling myself I’d end it. That this was the last time. And then I’d say, no, one more time. Just one more time. I guess I knew it’d end like this.”

_I wish I had._

“You should have told me.”

“Better late than never, right,” was what Seungcheol tried to say, but his voice broke midway and Jeonghan felt his composure break too, felt something hot and wet stream down his face.

He almost wished they were outside in the pouring rain so that he could pretend his tears were something else, but the whole point of this was that they were done pretending, right? Done pretending they didn’t fuck behind everyone else’s backs, done pretending there were no emotions there. Done pretending and playacting at an easygoing platonic relationship when that was the opposite of what was going on.

“Can I kiss you?” he said suddenly, and all he could think was that this was the last time he would ever get to kiss Seungcheol again, and it made his eyes water again.

“Never could say no to you,” and that didn’t make Jeonghan feel any better about this entire ordeal but it wasn’t about him, was it? So they kissed and it’s soft and quiet but at the same time, just pressure. Two mouths.

“If I hurt you, I --”

“That kind of apology is better off not said at all,” Seungcheol reminded him, and Jeonghan let out a quiet laugh.

“I do love you,” Jeonghan finally said. “But it’s not the right kind. It’s not enough. You deserve better.”

“What kind is it, then?” Seungcheol asked, eyes meeting Jeonghan’s.

“The kind where I end up putting my love for my career above you,” Jeonghan said, and it was a truth that he hadn’t quite given words to before but now that he said it, made perfect sense. It felt like the more he said it, the more he would believe it.

In the end, who would be with him forever? Himself. People left or died or disappeared; only you couldn’t abandon yourself. And Jeonghan had to make sure he had a livelihood, a way to keep on living.

There were some things you had to put above love and affection. Some people had their priorities a different way, but Jeonghan worked in a very specific kind of job, and he was going to keep whatever fleeting success he could while he had it. Jeonghan was going to wring all the money, all the opportunity, out of modelling, and having a boyfriend, secret or otherwise, didn’t factor into that.

“It will all be gone soon, I know,” Jeonghan said, hurried words trying to give an explanation, make him sound like less of an asshole, “but I have to keep it while I can, you know what I mean?”

And maybe Seungcheol would be around, like he always was, all those years in the future, after Jeonghan was too old and decrepit (in other words, forty) to be a model.

“I don’t know if I’ll be around waiting for you by then.”

Oh. Right. That was fair.

“I think I can live with that.”

“So can I,” Seungcheol said. “And, you know. If I am still around waiting.”

Neither of them needed to say the rest of that out loud.

Seungcheol let himself out, and Jeonghan let himself flop down onto the couch in the living room where he’d said goodbye to maybe one of the best people in his life, and cried.

* * *

When Seungcheol befriended Jisoo, Jeonghan had felt a ridiculous sense of betrayal.

It was stupid. He wasn’t a six year old in elementary school. People had enough space in their hearts for multiple friends. Multiple best friends, even.

He still couldn’t stop himself from being betrayed, nor the words from tumbling out of his mouth as he invited himself to Jisoo’s place, ostensibly to watch a superhero movie or something.

He tried to spend less time in his own apartment, even less than before, if that was possible. Jeonghan had never liked the place to begin with, had thought it a little much; he had spent so many nights at Seungcheol’s place, revelling in the university nostalgia it brought in his chest. Everyone had university nostalgia, but Jeonghan’s was maybe a little stronger than everyone else’s; it represented a peculiar kind of in-between time to him, a crazy kind of freedom. He couldn’t imagine that now, not with his morality clause (he didn’t stick to it), his life in the public eye.

In university, it had just been Jeonghan and Seungcheol, not Yoon Jeonghan, supermodel, and Choi Seungcheol, fashion photographer. They were just two people, two best friends. Now, there were more words to tack on after their names, more descriptors, so many things to weigh them down.

Well. That _had_ weighed them down, weighed them down until the ship sank altogether.

(It had barely sailed. They were a Titanic, dead on arrival, improbably unlucky on its maiden voyage.)

Jeonghan missed it, missed it desperately. He wanted to go back, but in the way that time worked, he couldn’t. Things couldn’t be taken back, words couldn’t be unsaid. The two of them were over, so why dwell on it?

Jeonghan had to learn to move on.

He went to yoga classes and the gym as a part of his job; when they were stretching the instructors always said to breathe through the pain. Just breathe. It would pass. The pain was only temporary, a passing visitor.

Just breathe. This too will pass.

“Hey, Jisoo,” he said breezily as he swept into her apartment, hanging his coat and leaving his shoes neatly by the door before dropping a kiss onto the crown of her head as she lay on the couch. She wrinkled her nose, but turned to smile at him.

“Jeonghan,” she replied. “How’s the weather out there?”

“Oh, fine,” he said, and the way Jisoo looked at him made him feel like they weren’t talking about the weather. “You know what spring’s like. A little bit of rain, a little bit of clouds, but the sun will come out eventually.”

“You think it will?” she asked lightly, swinging her legs off the couch and standing.

“I know it will. Come on, I’ve lived here my entire life. I’ve been through a few springs, Jisoo.”

“It’s not like this in California,” she said conversationally, moving to her kitchen. Jeonghan trailed after her, a little lost puppy. They had moved on from discussing his mental state just like that, Jisoo having segued into her reminiscences about what life had been like in the United States of America, home of the brave, land of the free. Apparently, his assurances had been enough to appease her.

“The winters here are a little too harsh for me,” she said, opening her fridge and peering inside. It looked so much like what Seungcheol used to do, that same faint furrow between the eyebrows, the slight pout that turned into a frown, that analytical assessment of the three items inside the fridge, two of which were probably alcoholic.

But Jisoo didn’t drink. Not usually, anyway. Even when he had broken out the nice soju for her, she’d only drank a little bit, enough to be polite. It was clear that the alcohol was supposed to be a coping strategy for him and him only, and she wasn’t going to do anything as crass as _judge_ him for it, but she wasn’t going to partake in it. That was the difference between him and Jisoo. She was good, probably too good, with actual morals and everything. She might aid and abet him in his occasional alcoholism, but she’d never participate.

And maybe that was kind of twisted in itself, but if it worked for her, then who was he to judge? Jeonghan knew a little something about performing mind tricks on yourself.

Jisoo wasn’t Seungcheol, anyway. It wasn’t fair of him to project that onto her. Jeonghan was trying out this new thing where he was fair to the people in his life.

(He knew he hadn’t been fair to Seungcheol. Jihoon’s means had been questionable but he had been right. Everyone had their sins, sure, but was everyone forgiven for them?)

“We never got snow back home,” Jisoo continued, talking more to fill up space than to actually communicate anything to Jeonghan, mute and unthinking. “It was all sun, all the time. The worst it ever got in the winter was rain, or a little bit of frost. It felt like summer even in the winter. It would be like, twenty-seven degrees. This winter was the first time I saw snow, did you know?”

“I couldn’t imagine never seeing snow,” Jeonghan said, leaning against Jisoo’s kitchen counter. There was a little fruit bowl, either decorative or functional (possibly both), patterned and filled with apples and peaches, round spheres with juice and sweetness inside. Jisoo tossed her keys into a bowl on the kitchen counter too, same as Seungcheol, and a pang of something resounded in his chest.

“I grew up in the city but I remember playing outside in the snow with my friends in elementary school. Most people have some nice memories of winter, even though we complain about it,” Jeonghan continued, snatching an apple from the fruit bowl and almost absently biting into it.

“Seoul and Los Angeles are so different,” Jisoo said, finally closing the refrigerator door. The sudden lack of cold air was startling; he hadn’t even noticed it until it was gone.

(A lot of things were like that.)

“Do you miss it?” Jeonghan asked.

“Miss what?” Jisoo said, almost surprised.

“Home,” he shrugged. Jisoo’s mouth curled a little in that wry way of hers when the question was a little too raw, a little too close. Models and actors and idols were all trained to respond to interview questions with a certain script; but Jisoo had no script for this question, not in this context, even though it was one she was probably asked every time she went on a set.

“People make home wherever they go,” she said, evasive. “I’m here, and I’ve made a life here, so it’s home.”

“Hey,” he said, gesturing with his half-eaten apple, “you should put that in your repertoire for interviews.”

“Maybe I should.”

Jisoo rattled around the kitchen a little, opening and closing cupboards, evidently looking for something edible.

“Jisoo,” Jeonghan said with deceptive casualness, finishing off his apple. “I heard you and Seungcheol are friends now.”

Jisoo shrugged, nonchalant, and then turned and stopped dead when she caught Jeonghan’s expression. “Yeah,” she said cautiously. “So what?”

Jeonghan polished off the last bit of his apple, crossed to the kitchen trash can, dropped it, listened to the satisfying thump of an apple core hitting the bottom. “Are you going to take his side now?” he said suddenly, and when he turned to look at Jisoo, he could feel that he looked like a paranoid child. Someone who didn’t know how to share.

“It’s not like you two are fighting,” she said, but her arms were still crossed. “This isn’t a war, Jeonghan, nobody’s picking any sides.”

“You’re supposed to be mine,” Jeonghan whined. “I was friends with you first! You’re not supposed to jump ship and join his team. He has people! He has Jihoon and Soonyoung and other photographer friends. You’re the only one on my side, Jisoo.”

“Let’s get something straight,” she began, biting her words out, “even though you’re not. I’m not yours, or his either. You two don’t get to own me. Just because I was friends with you first and then befriended him doesn’t mean I’m on any teams.”

“Jisoo,” he said, stricken, “that’s not what I meant. I didn’t mean anything about owner--”

“Well,” she said, “that’s what you said.”

“Jisoo, I’m sorry,” he said.

Jisoo forced out a harsh breath through her nose and didn’t reply for a long while. “You need to stop with the paranoia, Jeonghan,” she said, and she was standing by the sink, looking out the small window above her, out at the sky, sunlight bleeding away and to the other side of the world, where she had come from.

“This isn’t a war between you and Seungcheol. There’s nothing there anymore. And I’m not going to end up becoming a thing for you two to fight over. I can be friends with who I want to.”

“I know,” Jeonghan said, a little contrite.

“No,” Jisoo replied. “You didn’t.”

Neither of them spoke for a while. “Seungcheol’s a good guy. He’s fun, and a little quiet maybe, but he’s good to talk to, and the conversation flows easily with him. He’s good at what he does,” Jisoo said.

“I know,” Jeonghan said. “I know.”

“Do you want popcorn?” Jisoo said, finally pulling out a bag of microwave popcorn from a cupboard. “We could watch a stupid action movie.”

It was a peace offering.

“Sure,” Jeonghan said, his model smile coming out. “Let’s watch a stupid action movie. I need some explosions.”

* * *

Jeonghan tried to move on, after that. He still talked and laughed with Jisoo at all times, backstage after shows, at her apartment, at his apartment, sometimes. But he didn’t talk about Seungcheol. It was their mutual agreement; let’s not talk about you and Seungcheol. Seungcheol was the elephant in the room that accompanied all their conversations, went with them to Paris, London, Milan.

The next year, when the pain’s sharp edge had dulled a little, Jeonghan tried being straight again, tried wiping the taste of Seungcheol out of his mouth with some girl’s lip gloss, frosty and sweet. It was Seoul Fashion Week again, Jeonghan was just looking for something (someone) to do, and there was no shortage of attractive people in the fashion scene, no shortage of rookies looking to ingratiate themselves with a _sunbae_.

Jeonghan felt bad about it after, but he took advantage of that.

He wasn’t very discriminating either, chose a random girl from the crowd, smiled, flirted. Honeyed words tumbled out of his mouth easily, and the girl wasn’t starry-eyed about it (he would have felt worse if she had been), but she’d been willing, and they’d stolen off to some back alley near the show, ground littered with cigarette butts, and they’d kissed.

Maybe they would have done more, but the girl with Seungcheol’s eyes still wasn’t him. And Jeonghan didn’t know why he had even tried to replace Seungcheol with this girl, when he should have known that he never could.

Jeonghan left that girl in the alley with the cigarettes, regret burning a hole in his stomach, and smoked an entire pack through. When Jisoo finally found him, staring out at the Han River, she sighed, but brought out her own pack.

(Jisoo was a good girl, to some degree, but not _that_ good. Jeonghan was too hard to deal with without the assistance of some kind of drug, alcohol or nicotine or love.)

“Do you miss him?” she asked, punching a hole right through that rule.

“I try not to.”

“And how well is that working out for you?”

“Fucking terrible,” he said, and exhaled a ring of smoke.

“You shouldn’t treat rookies like that,” Jisoo said conversationally. “Siyeon is barely legal. She just turned twenty this year.”

Jeonghan shrugged, tossed his cigarette into the river. “She’s seen and done worse, even if she’s only a rookie.”

Jisoo’s mouth quirked, but she didn’t say anything to that.

“Why don’t we ever change?” he asked, frustration leaking into his voice. “Why do people stay the same? Do you ever feel like you’re trapped in something you built?”

A shrug. “People do change,” Jisoo said. “Just not when you want them to, or how you want them to.”

“You don’t feel trapped?” Jeonghan asked, voice full of something he couldn’t name. He couldn’t fathom not feeling trapped anymore, couldn’t imagine a life where he didn’t feel constantly suffocated by stacks of paper that he had signed, yards of fabric that he’d worn before, the smile he pasted on for interviews.

Jeonghan and modelling had a strange relationship. He loved it. He hated it. But that suffocation, that cage, he had made for himself, so did he even deserve to complain, to breathe a word of the hardships, the sheer exhaustion?

“I think,” Jisoo began, “that I’m not at the point in my career where I feel trapped by what I built. I’m still building my cage, is how I would put it.”

“So why do you do it,” Jeonghan said.

“Why do you?”

“I asked first,” he said, and a faint smile played on his mouth as he remembered a moment much like this, Paris in the winter, streetlights passing over them, two Koreans in the midst of a city of Frenchmen who couldn’t care less about them.

Jisoo sighed. “I don’t really know,” she said, words careful and measured. “Doesn’t every girl think of being a model at least once in passing? I was tall enough. I was skinny enough. I was pretty enough, but I didn’t look ‘Asian’ enough,” and here, a hint of Jisoo’s own frustration and disgust at the Western modelling world slipped onto her face, “to make it as a model out there, so I came here.”

“But you finished university first,” and Jeonghan had meant it as a statement but his voice tilted up at the end.

A huffed laugh. “My parents wouldn’t have allowed anything else.”

“What did you study?”

Jisoo laughed. “Business,” she admitted. “It seems so stupid now. I can’t imagine --” but she cut herself off and shook her head. “You?”

“I see your business degree and I raise you a degree in art history,” Jeonghan replied, already laughing a little at himself. “I was going to do museum curation. That was my dream.”

She tilted her head, studied him a little. “I could see you as a museum curator,” she said slowly. “Yoon Jeonghan, museum curator. Yeah, I can see it.”

He laughed. “I still can’t see you as some sort of investment banker.”

“I couldn’t either,” Jisoo said. “That’s why I’m not.”

Jisoo lit another cigarette. “I answered your question. Now, why do you model?”

“I like it,” Jeonghan said, but his words felt hollow even to him. “Or I did. The glitz, the glamour, the lights, the fame. I was young, and I thought it would be a few years of fun before they tossed me and moved on to the next kid who didn’t know any better. But I’m still here.”

_I’m still here._

“That means you’re something special, right?” Jisoo asked, eyebrows arched.

“It just means I’m charming enough to hang on longer,” Jeonghan said. “Nothing’s permanent in this industry. It lives off impermanence. It’s all I have left, I guess. I wouldn’t know what else to do.”

Jeonghan could see the light change in Jisoo’s eyes as she started to wonder what her future would be in the industry.

“God,” she said. “I wouldn’t know what else to do either.”

* * *

It took years to move on, for both him and the industry. Seungcheol rose to greater heights, and Jeonghan didn’t rise at the same pace, but he rose, too. Jeonghan kept pushing, kept reaching for whatever was at the top of the ladder he was climbing.

He never found out, of course. There probably wasn’t anything at the top anyway.

Eventually, though, high fashion got tired of him. Jeonghan had seen it coming, had expected it. He’d milked the money out of this particular cash cow. Models like him didn’t stay in modelling forever; they branched out, into acting or designing or becoming the agents for the next generation. Jeonghan decided to go with acting. It wasn’t such a different skillset; he was used to having eyes on him from all angles, used to playing to a crowd, used to pretending he was something that he was definitely not.

But of course, actors couldn’t come out either.

Jeonghan had picked lines of work that always, always pulled him further away from honesty. And he lived with those choices every time, just like he had to live with his choice (that was what it was; a choice) to drop Seungcheol for his career.

He tried to forget, of course. There were many times when he’d taken the stack of movies from his shelf and held it over the trash can, fully intending on getting rid of them. But he could never make his fingers let go, just like he could never let go, and that stack of movies still resided on his shelf even now.

Jeonghan only had that left of Seungcheol, and he couldn’t make himself throw it away, even if he never watched them again.

“If you could do another high fashion photoshoot again,” a reporter asked him at the press conference for his new drama, “who would you want to work with?”

“My good friend Hong Jisoo, of course,” Jeonghan smiled into the microphone. His friendship with Jisoo was public knowledge, and although there were occasional rumours that they were dating, it wasn’t like it was impossible for male and female celebrities to be friends without dating. It happened all the time, especially with idol labelmates, and now that Jisoo had signed with his agency, that was sort of what they were.

“Yes, but which photographer? An aging legend, like Mario Testino? A fellow Asian, like Sebastian Kim? A figure from your past, maybe?”

“You mean someone I’ve worked with before?” Jeonghan clarified.

“Yes,” the reporter said. “A photographer that you have a good impression of from your supermodel days.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Jeonghan tried to laugh it off. “There are so many.”

“But if you had to pick one. Seo Myungho? Choi Seungcheol, maybe?”

He hadn’t heard that name spoken to him in a while, and it was all Jeonghan could do to keep the blood in his face. “Maybe,” he smiled, and didn’t call on that reporter again.

**Author's Note:**

> title comes from eddy kim's song of the same name
> 
> kudos and comments are much appreciated! you can come find me on tumblr at [@colourofinfinity!](http://colourofinfinity.tumblr.com/)
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